-- A SENSE OF PEACE --

By John Herlihy

Ah yes, the elusive feeling of calm,

That longed for sense of peace that feels like balm.

Ah yes, how it eludes us there in the distance,

No matter what we seek, how hard the persistence.

Beyond the horizon, across the meadow,

The peace of dreams and the peace of snow.

We feel a sense of peace in things we don’t fully know,

The peace of the forest, with its sunbeams and deer,

The peace that emerges in the absence of fear.

Where is the sense of peace in the old sickle of moon,

With a face all cracked and ruined, casting borrowed light?

Moonglow has its moment, but peace is not part of its sight.

We know all too well what fills the vacuum that appears,

Whenever any true sense of lasting peace disappears.

At first the sense of hollowness fills the empty space,

An unease makes the heart feel an abandoned place.

Conflict and discord lift their weary head with sparks of fire,

And not the mellow creaminess that peace may inspire.

Into the hole left behind crawls the tendrils of bitterness,

Into the ragged edges left behind no fingers of tenderness.

Anxiety and worry take up the slack with peace left behind,

Misery and sorrow likely to fill up the orphaned mind.

Impatience rushes into the breach with feelings of discontent,

Discontent brings its shadowy shroud giving cause to lament.

Will I ever again take true comfort in a sense of peace?

Will I ever again have the feeling of such sublime release?

The answer that I had searched for was soon to come,

There in the tapestry of nature in those shades of green spun.

As I gazed across the landscape, I beheld myriad shades of green;

Whether in a newborn leaf or an aging tree, they betrayed noble mien.

What is it about the color green that inspires this feeling of peace,

Call it a feeling of rapture, otherworldly, seemingly without cease.

The blue sky shocks us, enthrall us, as do mountains and oceans,

Golden wheat, the earth brown as tree bark, the red rose all have their say.

The white of starlight, the pale moon, even a sparkling fountain,

All take second place to the peaceful color of evergreens on a mountain.

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(c) John Herlihy 3 November 2018